It’s been a month since Arjun Erigaisi was handed probably the harshest loss of his career: a defeat to Wei Yi in the FIDE World Cup quarter-finals, which meant that the 22-year-old will miss out on his second consecutive Candidates tournament. For Erigaisi, it was the sixth close miss over two World Championship cycles via three different pathways.
Even now, with a month having gone by, you can sense the disappointment in his voice when he talks about the feeling of being within touching distance of a Candidates spot that has become a barometer for success for India’s golden generation of prodigies. After all, over the last two World Championship cycles, Gukesh has won the Candidates and then gone on to become the world champion, while Praggnanandhaa will be heading to Cyprus in March-April for his second Candidates in a row.
“Missing out on the Candidates was obviously very tough,” Erigaisi tells The Indian Express in an interview. “But I knew that the world doesn’t end here. There’s so many years (ahead of me). My chances will come at some point, and I should be strong enough to take them when they come. So for that, I have to not just be stuck at this, but move on and work harder and harder.”
Arjun Erigaisi in a Global Chess League match. (GCL)
Erigiasi is speaking one day before he takes the board at Mumbai’s Royal Opera House in the third edition of the Global Chess League for his PBG Alaskan Knights team against Wei, who is representing two-time champions Triveni Continental Kings. Unlike that World Cup game a month back, Monday’s Erigaisi vs Wei Yi game ends in a draw, even as the Kings defeat Erigaisi’s Knights 15-3.
In the frantic, jet-setting lives that the top players inhabit these days, there is barely any breathing space between one tournament ending and another one starting. Erigaisi admits he took a 10-day break to stay at home, in the soothing company of his mother and his sister, to get over the heartbreak. But he emerged from the break feeling ‘even more motivated’.
“In the 10 days that I had at home, I was trying to stay in a very positive mood, like in whichever tournament that I’m playing, because like when you’re positive, you tend to play better,” he adds. “Especially after how the FIDE World Cup ended, I was very motivated to do well in my next tournament, and yeah, I made full use of the break.”
Last time when he had missed out on qualifying for the Candidates in Toronto, he had spoken about a sense of ‘detachment’ towards results and achievements.
Ask him whether he still retains that ‘philosophy’ of not caring for things like ratings and rankings, and Erigaisi says: “To an extent, it is still the same. My primary objective is to play good chess and not focus on the results but on the process. But of course, there are certain things I need to change that I understood, and I’m working on them.”
Ask them what those things are, and he says he prefers to keep some cards close to his chest. “Just chess-related things,” he shrugs.
After his elimination from the FIDE World Cup, his former trainer Srinath Narayanan had pointed out that Erigaisi tended to be aggressive and pushy in certain situations, which backfired. He says that it was a trait he got rid of at the start of the year.
“(Pushing for a win aggressively) was something I had at the start of the year. But I fixed that quite well, I think. And especially in the World Cup, throughout the event, I was playing very controlled chess. I think my quality in Goa was quite high. I just had one bad afternoon, and it didn’t have much to do with me overplaying or something like that.”
Even at the GCL, Erigaisi has come to Mumbai hoping to change his fortunes from the past two editions. In season 1, he played in a team with Magnus Carlsen, Gukesh, and Praggnanandhaa, while he shared a team with Viswanathan Anand last year in London. But success in the league has proven elusive. “None of the years really went well for me. I’ll try to change that as well this year,” he smiles.
